When Jace woke on Sunday morning, his first thought, even before he opened his eyes, was, Goats.
Or maybe that wasn’t the exact word, because he may have had a few dreams in there. He remembered some details from one of them, when he put his mind to it. It had involved a certain blonde sitting on a bar, for some reason, in that flowery dress, the one you could see through. He’d had his hand on her knee, was shoving her skirt up, moving slow. When his thumb had moved over the silk of her inner thigh, she’d moaned, her head had gone back, and he’d shoved her straight on down. And he’d thought, Oh, yeah. We’re doing this right now.
Wishful thinking. Wishful dreaming. Of a woman who’d let you do her on a bar, who’d surrender that hard and that completely, but only after she’d made you earn it. A woman who was tough right up until the moment when all she wanted was for you to be the tough one. He hadn’t found that dream girl so far, a warrior queen with a secret soft side—all right, a submissive side—that only you could touch. Probably because the dream was a few centuries out of date. Or possibly out of a video game. Fantasy could be a bastard.
And all the same, he was rolling out of bed, pulling on his jeans, shoving a hand through too much thick black hair, planning to milk goats, and hoping Lily liked wild men.
He let Tobias out the back door, fed him his breakfast, and started the coffee. Two cups drunk standing up, and real life filling the spaces of his mind, shoving out the fantasy. He took his cup over to the windows and looked over the front porch onto the valley. The dark shadows of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine, the patches of brighter green that were the aspen beside the creek, which were leafing out now. Dots of yellow scattered around, the avalanche lilies that bloomed first after the snow melted. Pale-blue sky, and all the promise of spring.
And something else. Something closer. Something wrong. He opened the heavy front door, the one he’d locked last night as always, the habits of a lifetime refusing to die, and headed onto the porch with Tobias on his heels. He studied the thing for a minute, then bent to pick up the padded envelope and stared down at it, his thumb running over the address, another wrong thing clicking into place.
Stamps. But they weren’t cancelled. No postmark, either.
The envelope hadn’t been here when he’d got home yesterday afternoon. It couldn’t have been left during the evening, or Tobias would have barked, even if the person had left a car on the road and walked up the drive.
Wait. Had Tobias barked? When Jace had woken from that dream—yes, he was sure the dog had barked. Jace had thought it was a response to his restlessness. Besides, he’d been preoccupied at the time. That must have been when.
What time had that been? Sometime after midnight. His hero, Matt Sawyer, would have known down to the minute. Sawyer was talented like that. But then, Sawyer was a superman. Jace couldn’t even pin down the hour.
He went back into the cabin, set the envelope on the table, looked at it some more, then got his phone and took a picture. Just in case. After that, he grabbed his gloves from the top of the firewood stacked near the stove, slipped them on, opened the package with his knife, turned it upside down, and spilled the contents onto the tabletop.
No paper this time. Two soft things, and one hard thing. He poked at them with the point of the knife. A woman’s red satin thong, size medium. A black satin blindfold with an elastic back. And a red thumb drive.
He took a picture of all of that, too, then texted both pictures to Rafe with a note. Got an anonymous admirer. Don’t have a good feeling about it. His brother was working in Washington, D.C., at the moment, but he’d get it eventually. Meanwhile, Jace went upstairs, pulled an ankle holster from the collection in a drawer, strapped it on under his jeans, and shoved the Glock home.
He’d thought he was done with this, but it seemed you were never really done.
There was no way he was putting that thumb drive into his laptop, but he needed to know. Was this serious, or just stupid? He went downstairs again, pulled out his old computer from the built-in bookshelves on either side of the river-rock chimney, set it on the table, and turned it on.
Nothing happened, of course. He found the power cord, plugged it in, waited an eternity for it to boot up—the reason it wasn’t his work computer anymore—and finally, when it had ground its endless way into functionality, put the thumb drive into the USB port.
Three image files. And a Word document. He thought about that virus, then shrugged and clicked on the first image anyway. The computer wasn’t important. Threat assessment was.
You could say the photo wasn’t illuminating. A selfie in a mirror, close up, going for artsy. A woman’s body half-turned away, the camera zeroed in on her breasts.
He had a little more information now, anyway. He knew his stalker was about a C cup. And that she was probably white. How white, he couldn’t tell. She’d taken it in black and white, and he couldn’t even tell the color of her nipples. Not too helpful.
He clicked on the second photo. Some more close-up, this time a rear view. A very rear view. He knew something else about her, maybe. That she was flexible, to have taken that photo.
Photo Three was no surprise at all. If these were supposed to make him crazed with lust, they weren’t working. Though he might have a little better understanding of what a gynecologist did all day.
“Tobias, mate,” he told the dog, “I think things are about to get dodgy.” The Ridgeback thumped his tail, and Jace said, “You’re right. Easier to face on a full stomach.” He stood up, pulled eggs, bacon, and bread from the fridge, cooked himself breakfast, going to some effort to get the bacon just right, and refilled his coffee mug.
He was arranging eggs on slices of buttered toast and scooping sautéed mushrooms onto the plate when he realized it. You’re stalling. He was letting her get to him.
Hell with that. He carried his plate over to the table, hooked the chair with a foot, sat down, clicked on the Word document, and began reading, registering the prickling of the skin of his arms, the back of his neck for what it was. His body’s response to a threat he couldn’t pin down.
Information was power. She’d been on his porch in the night. He needed to know.
The woman lay on the bed and listened.
The wind in the pines. The hard rain of a summer storm beating against the windows, coming in waves driven by the gusts.
Slap. Slap. Slap. With each slap of water on glass, her body jerked.
Relax. But how could she?
She checked off the items in the anonymous letter one by one in her head. The latest he’d sent, the instructions she still couldn’t believe she’d obeyed.
Red thong.
Red bra.
Black heels at least 3 inches high.
Leave the back door unlocked.
House dark except the bedroom.
And the last one.
Black blindfold. You will not take it off during the encounter. You will not speak during the encounter.
She could swear her heartbeat must be visible to anyone looking. Was he here already? Had he come in during the storm? Was he standing over her now?
She got her answer. The squeak of the front door opening, the slam of it closing. A heavy tread on the stairs.
Oh. God. I’m crazy. I’m going to die.
She felt the vibration of his footsteps coming closer even over the wind, the rain, the scrape of branches against the window glass. She knew when he stopped. She could hear his breath.
And when he grabbed hold of her wrists and yanked them over her head—she felt that, too.
“Relax,” he said, his voice low, amused. Unidentifiable. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to fuck you.”
Jace hit the down arrow. Blank. He hit it again, and found text. Not a story this time, though.
I’m not sure you liked my first idea. It makes me sad. Is it so hard to change? Change is good for you. You shaved, though, didn’t you? You’re giving me such mixed messages. I wonder if you even know what you want. So I thought I’d offer up an alternative scenario, one that you’re more comfortable with. We can ease into things. We’ll start out this way, and then, sometime, after you’ve fallen asleep, when you think you’re safe… you’ll find out how it feels to switch.
More blank space, and a tantalizing line of black text showing at the bottom of the screen. Jace hit the down arrow impatiently. His breakfast was getting cold at his elbow, but he had to finish this first.
Do I have your attention? You’re so lonely. So tired of not having the kind of company you need. The kind that’ll make all your fantasies come true, even the ones that are so dirty, you don’t even want to admit them to yourself. Here’s all you have to do to get it. Put the envelope in the bed of your truck when you’re at the gym today. Just the envelope, nothing else. Go there in the late afternoon, and park in the parking lot this time. I’ll get your message.
You can keep the thumb drive. You can even share the pictures. I don’t mind you sharing me. Tell your friends that you have a new girl, one who’ll do anything, including things you’ve never dared to ask for.
You can keep the thong and blindfold, too. I have another set. I’ll let you decide what to do about them.
Love,
Natalia
“Bloody hell,” Jace said under his breath. “You’ve got a few roos loose in the top paddock, darling.” His friends? Yeah, his friends would be impressed by that. If they were fifteen. And she didn’t know much about men if she thought they had a problem admitting their fantasies to themselves. You could say that was a man’s hobby.
He thought about those possible viruses, then copied the text, pasted it into an email message, addressed that to Rafe, too, and typed, “New level here. Mad as a cut snake in a sack, and she looks local. Think I’d rather have somebody shooting at me.”
He hit Send, ejected the thumb drive and shut the computer down, started to eat his now-cold breakfast, and stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth.
Curvy body. Blonde. A personality he couldn’t get a read on, and that constant sense that he was looking in a mirror, seeing things the wrong way round.
Lingerie.
Well, bugger.